Articles From the Team

Conveyancing boom exposes skills “gap” which has a knock on affect on the turn around time for qualified conveyancers versus non qualified conveyancers.

I recently read an interesting article on The Law Society Gazette which highlighted some key points regarding the “skills gap” in the conveyancing market:

This is a challenge which I come up against daily in that qualified conveyancers are hard to come by. Due to the downturn in conveyancing in 2008 not many people qualified into this area and there is now a massive skills shortage, which has had an affect on the turn around times on qualified solicitors, legal executives and/or licenced conveyancers.

For a period of time lots of firms were more than happy to recruit non qualified conveyancers as they can do the job at a fraction of the price but there now seems to be a massive recruitment drive for qualified professionals. The common trend that I am seeing at the moment is that the turn around time on qualified solicitors/legal executives and/or licenced conveyancers is between 1-2 weeks whereas non qualified professionals, the turnaround time has gradually increased from 2-3 weeks to c4-6 weeks. These turn around times are not very long compared to some areas of law i.e. for a strong private client lawyer you would be looking at a turn around time of c5 weeks as a minimum and a corporate lawyer you could be looking at anything up to 8 weeks, even longer if you are looking at a partner hire.

Many firms may not be aware of how quickly they need to move on qualified candidates as they will not be on the market very long along plus the need to make offers competitive and attractive as more and more firms are making counter offers. Counter offers are a mine field all of their own and should be treated with caution. My colleague Joanne Lack has recently written a blog on counter offers and why not to accept them.

If you are looking to secure a new job and would like a confidential discussion contact BCL Legal on 0121 236 2623 or email info@bcllegal.com